Political consultant James Carville provided the now famous (in the US, at least) phrase format for directing laser-like attention to the issue that presents the highest leverage. Leadership blogger Steve Roesler, in a recent posting on his blog, All Things Workplace, reminds us what the Towers Perrin and other surveys have uncovered. In Steve’s words,

Employees relate their success on the job to feeling cared for and about. Not money, not flex time, but feeling that people above them (emphasis added) care about their well-being.

Too many managers, under constant pressure to deliver results, forget that people are people, not machines. The vast majority of solutions organizations put in place to motivate staff are in the form of carrots (give them some stuff) and sticks (scare them with consequences–fear–should they choose not to perform well). Now of course, the former are appropriate, as part of the value proposition to employees. The latter are also appropriate, following a pattern of poor performance.

But what really turns the motivational crank of most humans who also happen to be your employees is the belief that their boss and, especially, senior management genuinely care about them as people, as opposed to just strategic human resource assets.

This means that, as a leader, you need to be in touch with how much you–truthfully, now–care about those who toil for the enterprise and, in particular but not exclusively, report to you. This requires some soul searching on your part. Do you really care or are you just pretending to, perhaps fooling yourself that you do?

If you come to the realization that you have, in fact, been pretending, I have news for you. They already know.